Personal and professional networking has traditionally entailed meeting with other individuals and exchanging business cards etc. in order to establish a personal or a business relationship. However, individuals rarely combine personal and professional networking together. By combining these resources, an individual could increase their own networking potential. Advances in technology have enhanced networking capabilities by making it easier to contact and network with another individual via systems such as electronic mail. However, with conventional systems, individuals usually do not have access to the networks of their friends and colleagues. An individual may have their own networks documented, but would rarely have access to their friends and colleagues networks. If an individual had access to the personal and professional networks of their friends and colleagues and vice versa, each would enhance the others networking potential and would open up a whole new window to personal and professional networking.
The Internet has given rise to several online communities on the World Wide Web that offer users an opportunity to network with one another. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,175,831 discloses a system whereby a networking database containing a plurality of records for different individuals that are connected to one another in the database by a defined relationship. Each individual define their relationship with other individuals in the database. E-mail messaging and interactive communication is utilized to establish the relationship between individuals. However, the problem with this technology is that it does not provide adequate privacy protection from undesired outside solicitations.